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Maccabi supporters wave yellow flags next to Israeli flags during the UEFA Europa League, League phase – Matchday 4, football match between Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv at the Johan-Cruijff stadium, in Amsterdam on November 7, 2024. [Robin van Lonkhuijsen /AFP via Getty Images]
Israel criticised the Netherlands on Monday evening over a decision to bar fans of Israeli football club Hapoel Be’er Sheva from attending their Europa League match against AZ Alkmaar, claiming the move “rewards those who threaten and incite violence”.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement after local authorities in Alkmaar reaffirmed the ban on the Israeli team’s supporters attending the match, scheduled for 15 October, citing security concerns.
“Two years after Israelis were hunted through the streets of Amsterdam, the Dutch answer is to ban the victims, not the attackers,” the ministry said.
It described Alkmaar’s decision as contrary to the fundamental principles and spirit of sport, claiming it “rewards those who threaten and incite violence”.
The ministry claimed that such attacks were “fuelled by anti-Israel incitement from Dutch politicians and public figures.”
It added that barring Israeli fans from the match, alongside the boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest, was “another stain on the Netherlands”. It also claimed that “the country increasingly becomes one of the world’s leading hotspots for antisemitism.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
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(Combo) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (R).
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has opposed Israel’s participation in military operations against the Houthis, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
According to the report, published on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for Israel to join military operations against the Houthis, but Saudi Arabia’s position is an obstacle to the move. Riyadh’s stance reflects its regional security concerns and the potential consequences of widening the conflict in Yemen and the Red Sea.
The report highlights differences between Netanyahu and bin Salman over Israel’s role in the confrontation. While the Israeli prime minister is seeking direct military involvement, the Saudi crown prince opposes the move, reflecting the sensitivity surrounding Israel’s direct participation in a regional war.
Previous Israeli media reports said military officials had recommended avoiding putting Israel at the forefront of the confrontation with the Houthis and instead focusing on building a regional and international coalition to address the threats.
The report concluded that the disagreement reflects differing views on the limits of Israel’s role in the war, rather than necessarily indicating a difference over the seriousness of the Houthi threat itself. Direct Israeli military involvement could widen the conflict and trigger further responses, including from Iran and Hezbollah.
Remove repeated points about opposition attribute analysis more cautiously.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Smoke rises after the Israeli army bombs a building in al-Bureij Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip, following an evacuation warning issued for the building, in Gaza, Palestine, on September 8, 2026. [Adam Bilal – Anadolu Agency]
Four Israeli military intelligence soldiers acknowledged they received instructions to use “heavy bombs” against inhabited buildings in the Gaza Strip without evacuating residents first, in strikes that killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians, according to a media report on Monday.
The soldiers gave their accounts to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, as Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, which began in October 2023.
The Israeli army has repeatedly claimed that it warns civilians in Gaza to evacuate before strikes, a practice Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have frequently boasted.
However, soldiers’ testimonies contradict these claims, as they revealed a complete change in open-fire regulations since the start of the war on Gaza, where approximately 2.4 million Palestinians live.
One intelligence soldier, identified only as A, who was tasked with tracking Hamas commanders in Gaza, said: “We knew almost nothing about Hamas and its military wing at the field level.
“In October 2023, we started almost from scratch to identify where their members and operatives were,” he said.
He added that the criteria for defining a target were quickly loosened, alongside “a sharp change in the concept of proportionality and the use of heavy weapons” and a significant easing of the policy governing the killing of civilians considered “collateral damage.”
Expanded targeting policy
Haaretz said the testimonies of the four soldiers portrayed “a fundamentally different concept of warfare, in which even relatively minor targets could be considered sufficient justification for attacks to harm civilians.”
The newspaper said the large number of civilians classified by the military as “collateral damage” was not simply the result of failures or mistaken identification, but stemmed from a policy of expanding the use of firepower “to the maximum extent.”
Haaretz said similar accounts had been presented during the three years of the war and that efforts to compensate for the intelligence failures of Oct. 7, 2023, “contributed to unprecedented tolerance for civilian casualties.”
The newspaper cited an Oct. 31, 2023 Israeli airstrike on a large residential complex in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza as one example. The stated target was Ibrahim Biari, a Hamas battalion commander in Jabalia.
“We knew Biari was underground, beneath large buildings, but we did not know beneath which building,” said a soldier identified only as D.
“So they chose buildings that were still inhabited and decided to destroy all the buildings above the tunnel where he was located. We did not carry out an evacuation because it was important to kill him without allowing him to escape,” he said.
Soldier A, who said he took part in the mission, said members of the targeting cell understood that the number of civilians likely to be harmed “was extremely high.”
“In the military intelligence estimates of potential collateral damage, there was talk of 250 to 300 people, so the decision was passed up for direct approval by the chief of staff,” he said.
“After the strike, as time passed, we understood that the number of dead was around 250,” he added, referring to Palestinian civilians.
“I remember being shocked when several densely populated buildings were flattened, killing hundreds, in order to kill a battalion commander who only a few weeks earlier would not even have been considered a target,” he said.
Responding to the Jabalia massacre, the Israeli army claimed that the strike had been “replanned several times to reduce harm to civilians,” saying the expected number of civilian casualties “was not in the hundreds.”
The army claimed that after the strike, “the damage was found to have exceeded its initial assessment.”
Nadav Weiman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, a left-wing Israeli organization, denounced the army’s conduct in Gaza.
“We cannot allow the killing of 300 civilians to assassinate a battalion commander,” he said. “Nor can we kill 20 civilians to kill every Hamas truck driver and then claim publicly that we did everything possible to prevent harm to innocent people.
“It is time for those who issued these orders to take responsibility instead of trying to get rid of the soldiers who courageously decided to tell the public the truth,” Weiman said.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice, the UN’s principal judicial organ, is also hearing a case brought by South Africa and joined by several countries accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Haaretz said another case described by the soldiers involved the Oct. 13, 2023 targeting of Hamas commander Ali Qadi.
According to the newspaper, an intelligence soldier in the Gaza Division had warned that Qadi “was behaving unusually,” but the division’s intelligence officer disregarded the warning.
“A few days after the war began, Qadi became a target and was subjected to heavy fire,” soldier A said.
“He was in the house with his family, and they decided to kill him. The army quickly announced that he had been killed, but in reality Qadi was the only person who survived the attack. Everyone who was killed had no connection to the target,” he said.
Without evacuation
Another soldier, identified as B, who served in a drone unit, said that after the war began, the division was authorized to operate under expanded parameters, meaning attacks expected to injure up to 20 noncombatants “did not require approval from a senior official outside the targeting cell.”
A third soldier, identified as C, who served in military intelligence, said that several months after the ground offensive began on Oct. 27, 2023, his unit was asked to prepare an entry zone into Gaza City for a maneuvering division.
He said several high-rise buildings in the area were considered a threat to Israeli troops and that an intelligence assessment estimated that about 25% of residents were still inside their homes.
“When we tried to ask how many residents remained and whether that was reasonable, we were told that those residents were targets for the forces on the ground. I could not understand or believe that we were talking about such numbers,” he said.
He added that the forces planning to enter the area could have waited considerably longer before approving the attack.
“So in the early stages we attacked without a full evacuation. Defending the soldiers was given priority, which is understandable, but the numbers (of civilian casualties) kept growing and became unreasonable,” he said.
The Israeli army has killed more than 74,300 Palestinians and injured over 175,400 others in a brutal war since October 2023 that has left the entire enclave in ruins.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
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Lebanese Armed Forces deploy at security checkpoints preventing displaced residents from entering the town of El-Fawqa as the army restricted access following the withdrawal of Israeli forces to perform critical unexploded ordnance clearance operations in the Nabatieh Governorate, Lebanon on October 2, 2026. [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency]
The European Union on Monday established a new support mission in Lebanon to strengthen the country’s defense and security institutions, reaffirming its commitment to Lebanon’s stability, sovereignty and state institutions, Anadolu reports.
The EU Council adopted a decision establishing the EU Support Mission in Lebanon (EUSM Lebanon), with an initial mandate of three years, according to a statement.
The mission aims to contribute to peace and security in Lebanon, strengthen state institutions and promote lasting stability in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
It will focus on enhancing the capabilities of the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces, as well as supporting maritime security governance.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said foreign ministers had agreed to launch the new mission, which will advise and assist Lebanon’s armed forces and internal security forces in strengthening territorial control, border security and internal security.
“With this new mission — a major update of our security ties — we continue to support the country’s institutions in restoring full sovereignty and building lasting stability for the Lebanese people,” she said.
The mission will operate through two pillars, military and civilian, under a unified political mandate, with each carrying out complementary tasks within its respective area of responsibility.
The military pillar will provide advisory support and training to the Lebanese Armed Forces, focusing on border and maritime security, land border surveillance and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, counter-smuggling and operational coordination.
The civilian pillar will support the Internal Security Forces through advisory assistance and specialized training to strengthen operational capabilities and develop sustainable training structures.
Following the EU Council’s decision, operational planning will continue ahead of the mission’s deployment.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli security forces demolish buildings and mosque in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, where an evacuation and demolition order has been issued for the construction of Israeli settlements, in Negev Region, Israel on November 14, 2024 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]
Israeli authorities demolished around 80 homes in the Palestinian village of Al-Dhahiya in the Negev region of southern Israel on Monday, displacing around 400 people, amid accusations that extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is using home demolitions as part of his election campaign.
Israel’s public broadcaster KAN said teams from the Israel Land Authority, accompanied by reinforced police forces under Ben-Gvir’s ministry, demolished around 80 homes on claims that they had been “built without permits” in Al-Dhahiya, an unrecognized village north of the city of Rahat.
The demolition came after the Beersheba District Court on Sunday rejected a petition seeking to postpone the demolitions, the broadcaster said, adding that around 400 people had been living in the homes.
In recent weeks, Ben-Gvir has publicly highlighted the demolition of hundreds of homes belonging to Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Israeli Arabs, over alleged construction without permits.
Last Tuesday, Ben-Gvir took part in the demolition of a five-story building housing 70 Palestinians in the At-Tur neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, an action the Jerusalem Governorate described as the “electoral exploitation of Jerusalem at the expense of Palestinians.”
The Joint List, an alliance of three Arab parties, denounced the home demolitions as “a blatant assault on the most basic human and national rights of our people.”
“The demolitions were a continuation of the successive Israeli governments’ policies of demolition, uprooting and displacement against residents of Arab villages in the Negev,” the alliance said.
Hassan al-Nasasra, deputy mayor of Rahat, also denounced the demolitions.
“The demolitions are not an implementation of the law in any way, but merely election propaganda for the racist Ben-Gvir and his group,” he said in a statement.
KAN also reported that United Arab List leader Mansour Abbas sent an urgent letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara demanding an immediate freeze on home demolition orders until the elections are over and a new government is formed.
Israel’s general elections are scheduled for Oct. 27.
Abbas warned against using home demolitions for “political and electoral purposes,” saying Ben-Gvir had publicly boasted about participating in demolitions “in a way that undermines the integrity of the election and the neutrality of law enforcement agencies.”
“Residents of unrecognized villages in the Negev are unable to obtain building permits because of a lack of planning for which the state bears responsibility,” he said, calling for a complete halt to demolitions of inhabited homes in such villages.
Dozens of Palestinian villages in the Negev are not recognized by Israeli authorities, which consider their homes unauthorized and do not connect them to water, electricity or road networks or provide schools, clinics and other basic services.
Last year, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that demolition orders in the region had risen by as much as 400% since the beginning of that year, drawing fire from Israeli rights organizations, which described the campaign as “discriminatory” and specifically targeting the Bedouin community.
Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev are Arab tribes that have lived in the area for centuries and were there before the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Israel was established in 1948 on lands captured by Zionist armed groups, before occupying the remaining Palestinian territories in 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
